


3.3 things that never happened to tom hanson

by Hope



Category: 21 Jump Street
Genre: AU, Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-26
Updated: 2005-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(season 2), based around the episode 'Orpheus 3.3′.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3.3 things that never happened to tom hanson

1.

he doesn't drink when he's mad. he wasn't mad when he started drinking though, more trying to dull the constant background irritation at the kitsch chequered tablecloths and dusty silk roses adorning their table. house wine, then, out of the bulbous thick wine glasses, and a bitter tomato pasta sauce settling uneasily in his gut.

"what's wrong?" amy, looking over at him, face illuminated coolly, softly from the light on the dash. tom ends his glance away from the road, returns his stare to the taillights glowing ahead of them.

"nothing," it doesn't sound very convincing, even to him.

"wasn't your meal very good? i thought you liked chez luis."

"well, i don't," he spits out, continuing before he can stop himself. "i hate it."

"oh." he grits his teeth. _even tempered._ "you never told me that."

tom extends the tenseness of his jaw to his fists around the slick leather of the steering wheel. "well, i'm sorry." not quite sure why, maybe because of what's coming next if it wasn't stuck so solid in his throat. "look. i--"

she's still looking at him, face still and smooth, hands clasped in her lap. her hair is thick around her face; he remembered at the start when he used to like to gather it up in his hands, pull it back to see if he could find more of her in the corner of her jaw, or beneath her ear.

"i don't know. i can't do this anymore, amy, this--"

"_tom--!_" her cry like an extension of the car's as he slams on the brake; but the red eyes of the taillights ahead of them are still approaching too rapidly and he heaves on the wheel more instinctually than anything else and the world slides out from beneath him then crashes over him.

then the grinding tick-tick of the engine slowing, pain in his arm. stillness. amy's hair on his face, jeweled with broken glass.

 

 

2.

the night's cold enough that there's a weird, glowing mist around the hot dog stand; and tom sees when they get close enough that it's the tacky neon light of the stand picked up by the steam from the huge pot of sauerkraut, billowing out when the attendant heaves off the lid again.

the hot dog burns his tongue when he bites into it, and he doesn't examine too closely the fact that he shoves down the abrupt recoil reaction of it and rather pointedly enjoys stuffing as much of it into his mouth as he can. he can taste the burnt, plasticky skin of it further toward the back of his tongue, only briefly as he swallows fiercely.

amy's eating a little slower, but still with no sign of disdain; curling her lips back from her teeth a little and huffing out her breath in silvery clouds to avoid the scalding heat of the hot meat. she looks over, catching his gaze, and smiles a little.

"tom," she says when they've finished their food half a block ago and have been walking for two blocks in silence. "you wanna tell me something?"

"no," an automatic response, a defense mechanism that springs up before he can stop it. "--yes. amy--"

her hands are deep in her pockets, cheekbones stained red by the cool air. "tom," her voice is very quiet. "i'm not stupid, you know."

"i know," he speaks jerkily, voice ahead of his mind again and he presses his lips tight together between his teeth. he looks up. they're between streetlights, and the sky above is dusted orange with the glow of the sprawling city, no stars in sight. "i don't know what to say," he confesses.

"are you unhappy?"

"no," he ducks his head, frowns, watches the uneasy cracks in the pavement pass below his feet. "but... i'm not happy, either."

"i see."

"i'm sorry, amy," and how long has he been thinking about this? long enough, but he still has to swallow hard when she withdraws a hand to reach out for his. he only hesitates for a moment.

"why do you have to be so damn even tempered?" he gripes half-seriously when the hot dog stand is in sight again, and they've come full circle around the block.

she smiles, shrugs, not calling it this time but instead squeezing his fingers before dropping his hand. "you wanna drive me home, at least?"

"yeah," tom blinks a few times, straightens his arms with hands in pockets to push his shoulders up against his ears. "sure. i'm still a little hungry though, would you mind if i..." he lists towards the hot dog stand a little and she grins.

"sure. give me the keys, i'll bring the car around."

he tosses them to her, jingling through the air for a tiny, shining moment before she closes her fist around them and turns away.

tom lets out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding, though in hindsight he feels like he was holding it for oh, about eleven and a half weeks now. his wallet is in his back pocket, and his fingers close around the warm leather the same moment the squeal of rubber tires slice into the mercury air of the street. it takes less than a few seconds for him to turn, but it feels like years with the thud-thud of her body against the metal lip of the bonnet like the beat of a drum that's never going to stop. the sound of her hitting the asphalt is the sound of a gold watch being smashed by a hammer beneath glimmering velvet, tom holding his breath with his father a solid presence beside him in the magician's audience.

"amy--!" her name rising from his mouth in an abrupt white cloud, her pale form unmoving on the dark tarmac.

 

 

3.

he feels sick. wonders how penhall does it; how he has the balls to piss a girl off so much that she can't stand it anymore and dumps _him_. how he could do that to someone that he _must_ have liked, at least once, without feeling a scrap of guilt. because that's what it all boils down to. guilt.

"amy," he shifts his grip on the steering wheel a little, no longer able to blame the vibration of the car on the road and the clenching of his grip on the leather for the way they feel kinda clammy and weak. amy looks back at him, expression nothing more than anticipatory of his next words. _even tempered._ "i... you... are you sure you don't wanna go to chez luis?" the dark-jacketed guy walking along the sidewalk he was using as an excuse to hold his attention looks left and right before heading into the doors in front of them, so he finally turns to face her.

she blinks, almost as if she were _expecting_ to hear something different, and that alone makes tom's tongue press against the roof of his mouth as his stomach threatens to makes its opinions on the matter more publicly known. "i told you, this is fine. tom," she reaches out a hand, grips it briefly above his knee. "i know you don't like it that much. lets just get some stuff to take home, okay?"

"sure. i just--" he lifts his hands off the wheel finally, half-raises them in a gesture of futile explanation. "i'm sorry." he turns to face her. "i just had a bad day, okay?" the lie slips out easily. being _undercover_ is his expertise, after all. though he's still a little surprised at the tight surge in his chest when she leans forward expectantly and he kisses her briefly.

"come on," she squeezes his fingers. "nothing fancy. just some bread, some dips maybe..."

"pretzels," he interjects, and she snorts out a brief laugh.

"sure, pretzels. maybe some soda."

"not that fancy imported stuff you like," tom grimaces.

"it's not _imported_," she grins, unbuckling her seatbelt and pulling on the door handle. "they don't sell imported stuff at convenience stores."

"yeah, but they don't put it in the fridge, do they?"

"what's that got to--"

he hears the thump-creak of the door to the store being shoved open at the same time as he looks up to see why she's stopped talking so abruptly. something dark flits in the corner of his eye under the stark fluorescent light, and he doesn't need the cue of her suddenly wide-eyes and open mouth to turn and know what's there.

"police!" he shouts, automatically reaching inside his jacket for his pistol, as his sights set on the hunched, dark figure; a gun swinging with the motion of its arms. "freeze!"

the pounding of feet synchronise with the beat of tom's heart, slowing, stuttering, and tom's underwater, everything sluggish and magnified as the guy spins, arm outstretched, and fires. tom drops, still-open car door serving as a shield until the shots cease long enough for him to spring out of his crouch, heart pounding, and fire back.

only once. "tom--" amy's gasp, crisp in the cool night air and the surge of adrenaline turns icy on tom's skin, footsteps fading as he clambers across the front seats of the mustang to where she is, crumpled and stained on the damp sidewalk.

 

 

.3

"come on," the guy says, and tom can smell his sweat, sour and vicious in the air but amy, amy, she still hasn't noticed anything, he mirror above tom's head making it feel almost like he's trapped in a fishbowl, no way out, gasping for air, watching her wander obliviously outside of it but he can't turn around can't turn around and "come _on_," the guy spits, and the clerk finally hands him the shaking fistful of bills so the barrel of the gun jerks to tom's jaw again and he didn't know it was possible to get any more tense but he thinks if someone touched him right now that he might fall over because all his muscles and joints are so tight, locked stiff, he wouldn't be able to cushion anything that touched him but then he's so tense and taut that he's ready for anything, even if the guy pulled the trigger right now tom could dodge it before the guy knew what was going on before he knew what hit him and this isn't right, this isn't the first time that tom's had a gun pointed at him, even _recently_, but _amy_, he can't see her in the mirror any more just hear her shuffling feet and the sound of the plastic food wrapping crackling slightly but he can't turn around because he can also hear the guy's hard breathing and his own heart keeping time, sounding loud and fierce in his ears and, oh god, he turns, sees her there, her head down, but the guy's maybe not as wired as he seems but that's too late now because he's not looking at the clerk any more and his gun arm is swinging around, not pointing at any of them as tom reaches into his jacket.

the butt of the pistol is hot, so hot that it feels ice against his palm before it scalds and he feels every fibre of the soft lining of the jacket brushing the hairs on the back of his hand but the coil of his elbow hasn't even sprung out before the sound of amy's scream shatters distantly like broken glass on the hard linoleum floor and tom can't seem to turn his head to face her because all he can see are the drowned pupils of the guy in front of him, the grease and sweat clinging to every craggy pore in his face, and then his ears start to ring and he can't even hear his heart, just feel it, ticking like a clock that needs winding, counting the seconds pushing out of his chest and through his fingers, hot and wet.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/30043.html


End file.
